Over Dewing It...

I was feeling a little saucy today so I decided to bite off a nice big 3.5 hour chunk of riding. It was pretty decent for the most part, but I think I did a bit more climbing than the knee was ready for. I need to just chill out and take my time getting some fitness, but that's easier said than done when my roommates are doing like 9 hour tempo rides and goin all fast all the time, and here I am riding 12 mph for 1 or 2 hours... overall thing are still going pretty well and I don't think I'm going to have to take any races off the sched.
So my epic jaunt took me out into the villes and burgs that surround Bloomington. Part of the ride took me into some uncharted territory. The residents of the uncharted territory didn't really like me parading around in my spandex in their burg, because I got 2 random flip off's and one of these bounced off my back:


Luckily it was empty and didn't weigh like 3 lbs, because then it may have hurt, this time it just kind of pissed me off. Once I saw that it was actually a Mountain Dew bottle I kind of had to laugh. The only way that could have been more cliche, would have been if it was a can of Budweiser with a Dave Earnhardt Intimidator coozie on it. That was the last redneck encounter of the day, I did however encounter the beast that is Boltinghouse Rd. Those of you Bloomington residents know all about this climb and all the tales that go with it. For those who don't know about it... it's something like 26% grade and there is no way to go up it easy. So I figured that I would go up that on my way back to town to see how pushing a hard gear would feel on the knee. It wasn't bad, but the 39-23 didn't exactly turn over very easily.


I will leave you will this YouTube clip that my DG girls found and passed my way. I think it's hilarious, hopefully you will too!


As long as fed ex doesn't screw it up, I should have some team bike pics to put up this weekend too.

later

Baby Steps

Progress Baby! Today I rode again, outside even, with a nice group of 10 or so. That makes 3 days in a row for those of you keeping track at home. I didn't go very hard or amazingly long, but it was monumental for me. This was the first day outside in 2 weeks, and without pain non the less. I've gotta keep being careful with the knee for at least another week, but as long as I don't do anything stupid, I should be able to start real training soon enough. The numbers were huge today... 2:33 minutes and 120 watts average. It's funny what has become good for me these days...







Also in other news, I recently committed to coaching the Delta Gamma women's little 5 team. They are pretty awesome and probably ride more than I do. I'm trying to get the hang of this whole coaching thing, but I think I've come up with some decent plans so far, but I'm not quite sure how do the whole motivational thing.

Props got out to my coach Jackson Stewart and the BMC boys for throwin' it down with the Boonen and the big names in Qatar. Hopefully they can get some good press for Amurica this week.

I can read good.

So I kinda rode my bike yesterday and today, not outside, but on the trainer. Yesterday I rode for 38 minutes and averaged 68 watts, and today I rode for a whopping 1 hour and decided to really lay down the power with an average of 104 watts. If I keep getting awesomer at putting down the power, I should be able to get up the hill out of my apartment complex by early next week...

Since I hadn't been doing much riding until the last few days, I have started to do a little reading.


I read "Positively False" and "From Lance to Landis." Positively False wasn't really very good, but it did raise some good questions about drug testing accuracy, but who knows. The whole book was so Landis-biased that it was hard to take much of it seriously. The other book was actually pretty rad. It had so many first hand accounts of doping in cycling and The Tour that it was hilarious. I'm not much of a doping crusader, but it was pretty cool to hear about some of the stuff that has gone on in the Postal/Disco team busses.

Speaking of doping, I've been thinking about doping my hair. I got another hair cut yesterday and I of course didn't get the back cut, but it still doesn't look like a real mullet. It's like a junior mullet. lame. Anyway, I'm going to keep trying to get the hours on the bike up and the pain in my knee down.

Later Bro-Brah's

Role Model

Before you know it my hair will be looking like my man Wouter Weylandt's euro mullet.


Get ready!


Picture stolen from Cyclingnews

Little 500

I don't usually talk about little 500 much, but I decided I would put a little something up trying to relay to those of you who haven't been or don't know much about it. So it's a 200 Lap race on a 1/4 mile cinder track where 33 teams of 4 riders compete against each other on single speed, roughly identical bikes. This is one of the reasons that our collegiate teams have never been so awesome, because it's tough to get everyone to form one team for collegiate when they all ride for separate Little 5 teams the rest of the year. We have taken our fair share of crap from the rest of the Collegiate boys for skipping so many MWCCC races to do things like Missing Out and Quals and other Little 5 related stuff, but it's probably warranted. Sorry to those of you who are from Bloomington and for you this is all old news, but since I'm not riding, I'm lacking blog-worthy material.  

Here is our Quals run from 2007

I'll throw in a few other pics too.

Warming up before Quals


Focused in the pits before the race


Waiting for an exchange


Running after getting the bike


Current road teammate Chris "So Intense" Chartier on my wheel


The front of the race


So that's Little 500 for ya. I don't really have the most fond memories from little 5, but just typing up this post gave me some cold chills. It's such a spectacle, it was just fun to be a part of it. It's by far the most people I have ever raced my bike in front of. Now that I've graduated, I think I'm going to miss it, but that's nothing a little Athens Twilight Crit can't cure...

A Thing for Married Girls?

So I wrote a few weeks back about the girl at the bank who I was trying to "holla" at. Well I went back to the bank and continued my "hollering" and things were going well, she seemed to be feeling it. Batting the eyes, twirling the hair, omg you're so funny, etc... Then I look down and she has a massive wedding ring on her finger. Maybe I'm an idiot for not checking those thing as the age of 23, but it never crossed my mind. Bummed out, I left and crossed that one off my list of mental possibilities. LAME! So later that day at my parents restaurant, another good looking girl came in and I was checking her out, obvi. Anyway, I was debating with a few girls who work there about whether or not she was cute, and how old she might be (dumb idea, because girls rarely think other girls are cute. They're always like "omg look at her chin, it's like funny looking). Anyway, the girl was eating with her mother and I wasn't about to go try any smooth moves on her right in front of her mom, so she gets up to leave an one of the girls is stalking her to ask her age, and as she gets close to her... ANOTHER FREAKING WEDDING RING! LAME! So that's 2 wedding rings in 1 day. I don't know if I've ever even seen 2 wedding rings the rest of my life. So I guess I have to start checking for wedding rings now, I can't believe it. Mike Friedman has a good blog entry about checking out married chicks here.

Enough about girls, back to cycling, or lack of cycling. So I am officially taking 2 weeks off. I had been back on the bike and the knee thing wasn't better, so I decided to just take plenty of time off and just make sure it's right for later in the season. So for the next 2 weeks I'll be taking 9-12 NASID's during the day, Icing my knee 3x a day, and doing these goofy stretches every time I have a free moment. This isn't exactly the jumpstart I was looking for this season, but I know I'll be fresh and super motivated with all this time off. Plus, I don't even have a "B" priority race until April, so I've still got plenty of time to get fast before May. 

Alright that's it for today. Thanks for reading. 

P.S. Download some Benny Benassi, it's life changing Techno!  

EDIT: I have no idea why the 2nd half of this post is spaced differently?... 

Had To

When I came across this Paolo Bettini video I had to share it with you peeps. The actual video part of it is pretty rad, but the music it is set to is sooo sick. I wish I were Euro.


Pretty sick eh? Also I am considering changing the name of my blog. There are others out there that choose to use the word sweet too much in their lame ass blog, and frankly I don't what that blog and my blog to have anything in common. The Name change will most likely take effect this weekend.

Peace Bra!

Get To Zee CHOPPA!

One of my homies in Oxford, Ohio has stumbled on some valuable knowledge about a race thats gonna be going down this spring. I can't tell you guys too much because I don't want anyone trying to swoop in and steal my chedda, but I'll tell you a little something, it has to do with The Govenator. In other racing news, the roommates and I were talkin' early season schedules, and it looks like were are going to head down to Athens, Georgia for a little Twilight Criterium Action. For some reason this race gets me all jazzed up. I am so pumped to go do this crit, I can't even tell you. It will only be my 2nd night time crit, but I love racing in the dark. I'm gonna pull a Heckman and win that shit.

N-E- Wayz... I'm still not riding yet. I think my knee feels better, but I can't tell without getting on the bike, so I'm not going to rush things just to be safe. I am getting pretty antsy though.

So this chick who used to be an avid reader of my blog, told me that she wasn't going to read it anymore because in a post a few days back a was talkin' about the girl at the bank whom I happen to have a little thing for. She said she didn't want to hear about the girl at the bank or any other girlie bull. She said she only wants to hear about cycling. I told her that that's probably the exact opposite of what everyone else says about my blog. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. The only problem now is that with her gone, I lost 50% of my readers.

I'll leave you with a little youtube clip of Athens from last year. Judging from the vid, it looks slow and easy.

Recovering

Sorry I've been so slow on the updates this week, I would have thought I would have been throwing down blog entries everyday of camp, but I guess I am easily sidetracked.

Now that camp is done, I'm dealing with the repercussions of trying to jump back on the bike and do big hours. I took yesterday off and rode for an hour today. The knee is feeling better, but I still need more rest. It's a lot easier to take the necessary time off now rather than in March and screw up the first real race of the year, Hillsboro- Roubaix. I'm sure I'll be fine after a few more days of R.I.C.E. Any-who, camp was awesome, we got some good hours in and did some team bonding. I think everyone is really motivated to make a good name for our team, and get some good results to go with it.

We planned out or race schedules, and it looks like my biggest races are going to be Tour of Arkansas, Tour De 'Toona, and then Elite RR Nationals/Downers Grove. Hopefully I can bring my A game and rack up some good results for Alderfer Bergen.

OK I'm out. Look for the official Alderfer Bergen Team Press Release on Cyclingnews and Truesport soon.

Crown Royal, Ridin' the Bus, and Naked Laps

We did a good 5 hours yesterday, with awesome weather in the high 40's. It was great to get out on the bike and get some good climbing to open up the legs. Andy Messer came over from Columbus to ride and hang too. I felt better for the most part yesterday, but the back of my left knee started hurting about 2 hours in, and went down hill from there. I tried to limp it in as best I could, but I still did my fair share of whining. Looking back on things I'm not surprised that I am feeling like this. I have ridden for 0 hours in the last 2 weeks, but then jacked it up to 9 hours in the last 2 days. That is STUPID! Luckily I'm the only one who seems to be really feeling too bad. I'm going to continue to continue to rest up and hopefully I will feel better in a few days. Enough of the sob story and on to the fun part of yesterday.

We went out for some mexican food and a beer tower to kick off the evening. Stuffed, we all came back to our place to chill for a bit and watch the IU Bowl game. We slowly ramped up the drinking and partying type activities. Before we knew it, the beer was flowing like wine, and women were instinctively flocking like the salmon of Capistrano. It was a party fa sho (not really, I'm just trying to sound cool). It started to get out of control and people (Mike) were running around naked and we were poppin' bottles of Champagne. All in all it was a pretty fun evening, with some great company.

January 1st 2008 we woke up to some serious snow action outside our windows. We took the morning to lay around and Chris made some wicked ham, egg, and cheese bagels and Mike and Pam went on a coffee run. It was a quite pro morning. Trying to keep from a totally unproductive day, we decided to go on a cruse through campus on the cross and mountain bikes. The conditions were blizzard like, but it was so epic that it didn't faze us. Pam didn't go for the ride with us, so she made us a wicked dinner and even gave the team base a good cleaning. We are going to have some team schedule stuff tonight and then get our laugh on with Superbad on DVD. The weather looks bad again for tomorrow, so it may be another creative day on the bike. As for me, I may take the day off, we'll have to see how the knee is feeling. Hopefully I can be smart about this and it wont turn in to a real injury.

By the way, check out the picture slideshow I added. So far it's just stuff from camp, but it should soon be a link to all my pictures that I'm hosting on Picasa

I'm glad I started 08 with a mediocre blog entry... don't want to set the bar too high.